Saturday, 14 September 2013

Endless Torment from the Poisonous Vipers of Aggro-culture: 4 decades after war ended, Agent Orange still ravaging Vietnamese

Endless Torment from the Poisonous Vipers of Aggro-culture

4 decades after war ended, Agent
Orange still ravaging Vietnamese

Le Thi Thu, 42, and
her daughter, Nguyen Thi Ly, 11, live in a village south of Da Nang, Vietnam.
They are second and third generation victims of dioxin exposure, the result of
the U.S. military's use of Agent Orange and other herbicides during the Vietnam
War more than 40 years ago. | Drew Brown/MCT

The effects of Agent Orange in
Vietnam are felt through the generations

By Drew Brown

DA
NANG, Vietnam — In
many ways, Nguyen Thi Ly is just like any other 12-year-old girl. She has a lovely smile and is
quick to laugh. She wants to be a teacher when she grows up. She enjoys
skipping rope when she plays.

But Ly is also very
different from other children. Her head is severely misshapen. Her eyes are
unnaturally far apart and permanently askew. She’s been hospitalized with
numerous ailments since her birth.

Her mother, 43-year-old
Le Thi Thu, has similar deformities and health disorders. Neither of them has
ever set foot on a battlefield, but they’re both casualties of war.

Le and her daughter are
second- and third-generation victims of dioxin exposure, the result of the U.S.
military’s use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, when the U.S. Air Force
sprayed more than 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides over
parts of southern Vietnam and along the borders of neighboring Laos and
Cambodia. The herbicides were contaminated with dioxin, a deadly compound that
remains toxic for decades and causes birth defects, cancer and other illnesses.

To this day, dioxin
continues to poison the land and the people. The United States has never
accepted responsibility for these victims – it denies that Agent Orange is
responsible for diseases among Vietnamese that are accepted as Agent
Orange-caused among American veterans – and it’s unclear when this chain of
misery will end.

On Thursday, President
Barack Obama will meet with Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang at the White
House, only the third meeting between chief executives of the two countries
since Vietnam and the United States established diplomatic relations in 1995.

The two countries share
many contemporary concerns. The White House says Obama plans to discuss
cooperation on regional issues and trade, plus other U.S. priorities such as
climate change and human rights. The two countries share a strong common
interest in countering China, which has become increasingly assertive over
potentially oil-rich areas of the South China Sea.

Many Vietnamese say it’s
time for the United States to do more to address the issue of Agent Orange and
its victims, so that the last tragic chapter of the Vietnam War finally can be
closed.

Le Thi Thu’s father
served in the North Vietnamese army and was wounded in Quang Tri province, one
of the most heavily sprayed areas of the country.

“Before he went to war,
my father had two children: my older brother and sister,” said Le, who was born
in 1970. “They were normal. But after he came back, he had me.”

“I could see the
differences in myself and others right away,” she recalled. “When I was a small
child, I felt pain inside my body all the time. My parents took me to the
hospital, and the doctors determined that I had been affected by Agent Orange.”

When her daughter Ly was
born, “we knew right away” Agent Orange was to blame, Le said.

The Vietnam Red Cross
estimates that Agent Orange has affected 3 million people spanning three
generations, including at least 150,000 children born with severe birth defects
since the war ended in 1975.

“During the war, we were
hostile, but after the war ended, we normalized our relations and are now
building a strategic partnership between Vietnam and the United States,” said
retired Col. Thai Thanh Hung, the chairman of the 16,500-member Da Nang
Veterans Association. “We no longer have hatred towards the Americans and the
U.S. government, but we want this one lingering and remaining issue to be
addressed, which is that the United States help solve the Agent Orange and
dioxin problem. That’s why we’re keeping an eye on this issue, to see if the
United States is really interested in healing the wounds or not.”

The most significant
event to date occurred last August – 37 years after the war ended – when U.S.
contractors began a project to remove dioxin from 47 acres of contaminated soil
at the Da Nang International Airport, which was one of the largest U.S. bases
during the war.

The $84 million effort,
which is expected to take until the end of 2016 to complete, has been hailed as
an important milestone in U.S.-Vietnamese relations. The airport is one of the
most heavily contaminated areas in the world, with dioxin levels measuring more
than 365 times the acceptable limits set by the United States and other
industrialized countries.

Observers say that while
the project represents a long overdue first step, more work needs to be done.
More than two dozen other known or potential dioxin “hot spots” have been
identified at former U.S. bases. Also left unresolved is the thorny issue of
how best to help Vietnamese who’ve been sickened and disabled because of Agent Orange
and dioxin exposure.

U.S. aid for these people
so far has amounted to a pittance. According to the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, only
$11 million of the $61.4 million that Congress has allocated since 2007 – a
year after then-President George W. Bush pledged to help clean up contaminated
areas – has been earmarked for public health programs in Vietnam.

U.S. officials caution
that the money is to help people with disabilities “regardless of cause,” and
isn’t specifically for Agent Orange victims. This semantic sleight of hand
outrages many American veterans of the war, who say the United States has a
moral obligation to help Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange, just as sick and
dying U.S. veterans have received government help for the last two decades.

“There’s a hypocrisy
there,” says Chuck Searcy, who served in Vietnam as an intelligence analyst
during the war and has lived in Hanoi since 1998, heading up a project to clear
battlefields of unexploded ordnance, which also continues to kill and maim
Vietnamese. “It’s a glaring disconnect, and it’s embarrassing because the whole
world can see it.”

The U.S. Department of
Veterans Affairs says that all 2.8 million Americans who served “boots on the
ground” in Vietnam from 1962 to 1975 were exposed to Agent Orange and other
herbicides, which were in use from 1961 to 1971. They qualify for compensation
if they become sick from any of 15 illnesses presumed to have been caused by
their exposure. The VA also recognizes another 18 birth defects in the children
of female veterans.

In 2011, the last year
for which data was published, the VA paid nearly $18 billion in disability
benefits to 1.2 million Vietnam-era veterans, including 303,000 who received
compensation for diabetes mellitus, the most common of the 15 diseases
associated with herbicide exposure.

U.S. officials have long
held, however, that there’s no proof that Agent Orange is to blame for the same
diseases and birth defects in Vietnam.

“Few independent studies
have been conducted in Vietnam to assess possible health effects on the local
population,” said Chris Hodges, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi. “The
lack of validated data and scientific review makes it difficult to estimate
accurately the number of actual or potentially affected people or the extent of
related health effects.”

In many ways, the fight
for recognition of Vietnam’s Agent Orange victims mirrors the 20-year struggle
that U.S. veterans endured before Congress granted them compensation in 1991.

Hoping to emulate a case
that resulted in a 1984 settlement requiring Dow Chemical, the Monsanto Corp.
and other Agent Orange manufacturers to pay $197 million in damages to sick
U.S. veterans, a group of Vietnamese victims sued in 2004, only to have the
same federal judge dismiss their case a year later, saying the companies were
immune because they were following government orders. The Supreme Court
declined to hear the case in 2009.

As occurred with U.S.
veterans, momentum in Congress appears to be shifting favorably toward the
Vietnamese. In 2011, lawmakers directed the U.S. Agency for International
Development to develop a plan for assisting Vietnam with Agent Orange programs
in the coming years. The agency hasn’t yet released its proposals.

For its part, Vietnam has
put into motion a set of steps that it says will “fundamentally solve” its
problems with Agent Orange by 2020. The document, signed in June 2012 by Prime
Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, outlines preferential treatment for all ailing
veterans who fought against the Americans, monthly stipends and health coverage
for families with disabled members and special care for pregnant women from
contaminated areas.

The Aspen Institute, a
Washington-based research center, has called on the United States to spend $450
million over 10 years to clean up Vietnam’s dioxin hot spots, restored damaged
ecosystems and expand health care for people with disabilities.

It’s unclear how much
Congress is willing to do. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., introduced a bill last
month that would commit the United States to cleaning up all remaining sites
and would provide assistance to help Vietnam give better health care and other
resources to Agent Orange victims. An identical bill introduced two years ago
failed to make it out of committee.

Searcy, the former intelligence
analyst who lives in Hanoi, points out that after nearly 40 years, Vietnam’s
expectations of the United States remain modest.

“The Vietnamese have
never demanded that the U.S. do for the Vietnamese what they’ve done for U.S.
veterans,” he said. “But the Vietnamese have left the door open to do what’s
fair.”

“I think it’s possible to
bring some closure to this within the next decade,” he added.

Generation
Orange: Heartbreaking portraits of Vietnamese children suffering from
devastating effects of toxic herbicide sprayed by US Army 40 years ago

They were born decades
after American forces had sprayed the herbicide dioxin Agent Orange in South Vietnam, but some children living in the
region today continue to suffer from the horrifying effects of the chemical.

New York City-based
photographer Brian Dricscolltraveled
to Vietnam to document the everyday struggles of third generation Agent Orange
victims battling dozens of serious ailments, physical deformities and mental
disorders.

Driscoll was inspired to
take up this difficult topic by his uncle, a Vietnam War veteran who may have
been one of estimated 2.6 million U.S. soldiers believed to have been exposed
to Agent Orange in the 1960s.

Deformed: Nguyen and Hung Vuong Pham,
14, and 15, await their daily bathing in the Kim Dong district of Hai Phong,
Vietnam. Their days are occupied watching people pass by the front area of
their home

Lost generation: Third generation
Agent Orange victim Nguyen Pham, 11, deaf, blind and cannot speak has been bed
ridden for a great portion of his life; a makeshift wheel chair for a
victim of Agent Orange, in the Phuong Son district, Nha Trang

Perpetual suffering: Former Viet
Cong soldier and father, stands behind his son Nguyen Van Dung, 12, at home in
the Kim Dong district of Hai Phong, Vietnam. Nguyen is tied by the hands
because he compulsively tears at his own face

Innocent: Huong Nghiem, 8, third
generation Agent Orange victim, is being held by her mother in the door way of
their home in the Tran Cao Van district, Hoi An

The American photographer
traveled to Hanoi and tracked down a group of young Vietnamese whose health has
been ravaged by the chemical, the site Feature Shootreported.

For three weeks, Mr
Driscoll made his way south through remote villages, ending his journey in Nha
Trang about 640 miles from the capital.

During his travels,
Driscoll got to meet and take pictures of teenagers and children as young as 5
suffering from debilitating conditions, among them Nguyen Pham, 11, who is
deaf, blind and mute. The boy has been bed-ridden for most of his life.

Agent Orange is the
combination of the code names for Herbicide Orange and Agent LNX, one of the
herbicides and defoliants used by the U.S. military as part of its chemical
warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War from 1961 to
1971.

In the course of 10
years, American forces sprayed nearly 20million gallons of the chemical in
Vietnam, Laos and parts of Cambodia in an effort to deprive guerrilla fighters
of cover by destroying plants and trees where they could find refuge.

Daily torment: Nguyen Quang, 11,
on his bed at home in the Kim Dong district of Hai Phong. Village leaders
believe most of the children to be third generation Agent Orange victims due to
the commonality in mental disorders and physical deformities

The forgotten: Suffering from a
distorted reality, Nguyen Tran Ho, 11, gazes out from his bed (left); Thom Le
Pham (right) gives a look of despair at home in the Benh Vien district, Danang
Vietnam

Heart-wrenching sight: Phirum Ung,
5, third generation Agent Orange victim, naps in a hammock at home in Beng
Melea Province, Cambodia. Most days are spent with his mother pan-handling at
the Angkor Wat Temples

Family: A mother of an Agent
Orange victim at home in Kim Dong district of Nhat Tan, Vietnam

The chemical was
manufactured for the U.S. Department of Defense by Monsanto Corporation and Dow
Chemical. It got its name from the color of the orange-striped 55-gallon
barrels in which it was shipped to Asia.

Jeanne Stellman, of the
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, estimated that up to 4.5
million Vietnamese were living in the 3,181 villages that were directly in the
spray paths and were potentially exposed to the herbicide.

According to the Vietnam
Red Cross, about 1 million Vietnamese have been affected by Agent Orange,
including 150,000 children suffering from birth defects, CNN reported.

Shadow: Le Sinh, 14, Agent Orange
victim, looks out from the lanai at home in the Benh Vien district, Da Nang

Shocking figures: The Vietnam Red
Cross estimated that about 1 million Vietnamese have been affected by Agent Orange,
including 150,000 children suffering from birth defects

Bucolic setting: The house of
Nguyen Pham, 11, an Agent Orange victim, in the district of Chi Linh, Vietnam

One day at a time: A mother at
home cares for her child who is affected by Agent Orange. Quang Ninh district

The U.S. government,
however, has dismissed these figures as unreliable and inflated.

Among the illnesses
contracted by people exposed to the dioxin are non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, several
varieties of cancer, type 2 diabetes, soft tissue sarcoma, birth defects in
children, spina bifida and reproductive abnormalities, to name a few.

Earlier this month, the
Association for Victims of Agent Orange in Ho Chi Minh City has filed its
fourth lawsuit against American chemical companies that produced Agent Orange.

New Illuminati comments: Every
barbaric weapon of war will be returned to the user tenfold (including
herbicides and radioactive dust). Agent Orange (in the diluted guise of 2,4-d
and 2,4,5-t) was sprayed on Western croplands and waterways for decades before
being banned – and it’s still in our food and water, poisoning everything
decades later. ROUNDUP is the last roundup too, made by the same malevolent
chemical corporation that sprang from the loins of bomb manufacturers after they
lost their prime profiteering market in WW2. POISON is POISON.
grow, buy and eat organic – or else.

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